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Darkness prevailed. The glow of Tsukuyomi’s sword faded. He couldn’t see me, but because of my bond with the Dark Room, the shadows weren’t a hindrance. I could see how he was glancing around him with increasing anxiety. I could see the uncertainty in his eyes.
Tsukuyomi chuckled, but this time nervously. “Who will come to save you now?” he taunted. “You’ve locked your allies out.”
I couldn’t help myself. I had to say it.
“Actually – I’ve locked you in here with me.”
Tsukuyomi bared his teeth, his eyes flashing with something like fear. “Then let’s finish this,” he said, brandishing his sword.
“Gladly.”
I sprang at him with everything left in my body, using the darkness to my advantage, wreathing my hands with fire, pelting him with bolts of bloodied flame. God that he was, Tsukuyomi still dodged flawlessly, but I could see his defenses withering, his energies fading. Without the moon, he was nothing.
“You can’t defeat me,” he said. “It isn’t possible.”
“I’ve
beaten gods,” I said. “I’ve bested demons. I’ve destroyed angels. You underestimated me from the start.” Where the hell was this all coming from? My chest swelled with pride, with power.
I took a risk. I bathed my right fist in flame, the way I’d only done a few times in the past, and aimed a punch directly at Tsukuyomi’s face. That should have ended it. But it had slipped my mind, somehow. God or no god, Tsukuyomi was still a warrior – and a better one than I was.
And as with all displays of bravado, as my head swelled with the whispers of my ego – so was it easier to send me crashing down. He dodged my blow, and in a horrible, flashing arc, sent his katana slicing deep into my thigh.
I cried out and fell to the ground, clutching my leg, grimacing against the searing pain. Tsukuyomi strode over me, raising his sword, grasping its hilt with both hands. The killing blow.
My fingers dug into the earth, my soul desperate to use the Dark Room as an escape hatch, but I’d already taxed it so much. It had taken most of my power to generate the massive sphere of darkness around us, much less the blasts of fire. Damn it. Carver was always right. I was too brash. Always too impulsive.
When Tsukuyomi spoke again, he was no longer afraid, but neither was he laughing. It felt like a hunter mumbling an apology, a prayer to its fallen prey. In some ways, it reminded me of how a man might swat an insect.
“This is the end,” Tsukuyomi said, his head bowed in reverence. “It was a good fight, shadow beast.”
Something rustled out of my backpack, bolting through the gloom. Tsukuyomi screamed. In the darkness he staggered away, one hand still barely holding his sword, the other groping shakily at his neck. I squinted my eyes to make sure I was seeing things right. He was reaching for something that had been stuck in his throat. It was –
Jesus, was that a butterknife?
A shimmer of copper flitted around the moon god’s head as he kept on screaming and swatting at the air, and a familiar voice told me it was time to put an end to the fight.
“Kick his ass, Dust!”
Scrimshaw. Fucking Scrimshaw.
I wasn’t going to ask why he’d decided to hide in my backpack with a butterknife. We’d figure out the technicalities of him getting involved in the trial later. I sprang to my feet, shoulder checking Tsukuyomi to throw him off balance. We crashed heavily to the ground. Before he could maneuver again with his sword, I thrust my open palm at his throat, my body acting purely on instinct. At first I wondered why.
Then I saw it: the black blade that had sprung directly out of the wound in my palm. I had conjured a dagger of pure darkness right out of my own blood. My bond to the Dark Room had quickened, somehow. My blood was acting as a conduit for the swords of shadow.
I pressed the dagger against Tsukuyomi’s throat, the hellish black of its blade in glaring contrast to the moon-like pallor of his skin. I watched as a silvery drop of the god’s blood beaded at the blade’s tip. Tsukuyomi grunted. I won’t lie. The sound of his fear and defeat gave me pleasure.
“Concede,” I said. “And you live.”
Tsukuyomi bared his teeth, but he went limp, and he shuddered. “It is ended. The others have lost, anyway.”
An odd clang like the ring of a hollow glass bell sounded through the night, and Nyx’s voice carried over the noise.
“The mortals have won. The Convocation will crown its champion.”
I released my hold on the Dark Room. The blade emanating from my wound dissolved into nothing, the pressure of its connection between my body and Tsukuyomi’s blood fading, but remembered, like a phantom limb. The world brightened as the sphere around us receded. I gazed at the moon, still straddled across its master’s chest, and grinned.
“Get off me,” Tsukuyomi grunted.
